The mainstream American comics market

Mr. K

Fysh wrote: »

If you disagree with how I see the mainstream American comics market, we can have a discussion about that.

I don't disagree fully with Fysh's views, but I really like Marvel and DC characters. I've been reading Spidey since 1996 and X-Men for almost as long. My DC reading has consisted mostly of TPBs. I don't agree with everything they do (reboots/constant "events"/Brand New Day), but I keep reading in the hopes they do better. Many of the events are cool ideas anyway, particularly Civil War and Dark Reign.

Does this make me a drone? Or a simpleton?

livingtargets

I love these characters as well but I (and I would think a fair few people) think the American mainstream market only serves one genre rather than than a medium.

True enough there are some mainstream comics about something other than superheroes(Sgt.Rock and The Haunted Tank to name two)but these only really serve the nostalgia market from the glory days of war and horror comics.

I don`t really have any problem with superheroes so long as they`re treated as a genre and not a medium.

Can you post a link as well,just so people can see the context?

Fysh

This is a thorny issue and one on which I imagine I probably haven't expressed myself as clearly as I might like.

The perception I have of the mainstream American market partly involves the target audience but also includes the publishers and how they see and treat their audience. Personally, I find too many of these comics to be conservative in terms of what ideas and concepts they are willing to introduce - I've never quite been able to forget that there is a status quo which they operate on, and while that's not a problem in itself, it doesn't necessarily lead to the kind of stories I'm interested in reading.

I'm not going to claim that my tastes are superior or anything daft like that; there should be enough space in the marketplace for all kinds of material so everyone can read something they like. The issue I have is that for the most part, there are no titles within the American mainstream that appeal to me in this way.

Where the problem arises is when fans complain that something terrible has happened; let's use BND as an example. If you're a long-standing Spider-man fan I can see why the storyline would be galling - it's undoing a load of the stories that you were sold over years. And for what? To make the character arguably easier to sell by making him effectively younger. What seems to have happened is that a lot of readers carried on reading and still are reading, complaining all the way about how terrible the story is. So Marvel makes money along the way. Those people, in my head, are both drones and simpletons. Not for disliking the story, but for disliking it and buying anyway.

I find that aspect of the American comics audience insidious, because the behaviour basically says "whatever you do with these characters, we'll buy it". Marvel and DC already seem to have a reluctance to put any serious push into selling non-superhero comics; this message just reinforces it.

The other aspect I find insidious is the segment of the audience who are so invested in the characters they follow that they find the idea of non-superhero comics to be somehow aberrant, or non-serialised comics to be wrong. I don't think that the medium and the market gains anything good from having portions of audience who confuse genre and format for the medium as a whole.

Edited to add:

For those wondering, this thread has spun out of the discussion in the "price hike?" thread.

Gambler

I have to say I generally agree with Fysh here. Every time the big two take a risk and try to develop the characters some more these days they just go and roll it back. Take the recent "Death of Batman" in RIP. Batman was my "First Love" when it comes to comics so on one hand I didn't like the idea of the story line but to have this wishy washy death that you knew all along meant that at the very least Batman was going to live but maybe have his alter-ego bruce die (which if you look at the storys over the last while wouldn't really change anything of any real substance.).

I got excited again about the idea of Dick or Tim taking over the mantle of the Bat and seeing how that could be a seismic shift in the character. I would even have been happy with a real tortured removal of the bruce alter ego, something that examined what "being bruce" meant but again I can't help but feel that if I pick up a batman in 6 months time I won't be able to tell that any of it really happened.

I dunno what the answer to the problem is, if people like us stop buying the comics then the comics end up not being made, but the more they keep maintaining the status quo for fear of putting us off the more they seem to push us (or at least me) away..

Mr. K

I think much of the stuff that's happened since BND has been pretty good, but it was the "deal with Mephisto" part that bothered me. It could've been so much more organic! Did any of ye read the Clone Saga? I loved when Ben Reilly was Spidey, it was so fresh and fun!

Gambler, I agree with you on Batman. It'd be so cool to see Dick take over the Batman identity.

Ahem, as you might have noticed, I like when heroes are replaced (for a few years, at the very least)!

JesterWX

Bottom Line, Raise my Hand. I love super-hero comics, always have always will.

I've been buying reading and collecting them since I was a kid. Long before there were comics shops or sci-fi bookshops, I searched high and low for newsagents that managedto get in batches of American comics. I even picked up the UK comics that reprinted the American stuff. DC, Marvel, Charlton, MLJ, and Tower. I collected them all.

But I also collected the Marvel and DC war and western stuff as well when they were publishing them. Still at the end of the day, most of the stuff I collected was super-heros.

In the more recent times with a now steady flow of new material I do buy some of the non-traditional stuff but its still super-heroes which dominate my shopping list.

I will confess to continuing to buy certain titles when I thought they were not up to standard in the hope that they got better. But nowadays I am far more inclined to drop a title when I feel its right to do so.

The point is that in someways I am the typical 'fanboy' but I don't care. My family will have the job someday of disposing of my collection when I pass on. I hope they don't undersell it too much. Until then I'll enjoy reading and occasionally rereading them.

shenanigans1982

As with Jesterwx superhero comics make up most of my monthly list and I wouldn't class myself as a drone or a simpleton.

The main reason why I feel they dominate the market so much is because they are easy to access. Spider-man, Superman, Batman, Captain America they are all instantly recognisable images and things that have taken years for Marvel and DC to build up to that stage...why would they take the risk of promoting titles that are less mainstream that would be more likely to fail than make money for them?

Chances are most people who are posting here started out reading "mainstream" titles so they do fulfill a purpose.

Mr. K

http://i.livescience.com/images/BFTC_NYCC-Spread_comp.jpg

Just to add to the Batman aspect pf the discussion, that's a teaser image for an upcoming event. The various takes on the costume are cool, particularly Two Face's! I'd love to see some long term changes to the Batman status quo.

Fysh

shenanigans1982 wrote: »

The main reason why I feel they dominate the market so much is because they are easy to access.

You have to bear in mind that saying "superhero comics are easy to access" is meaningless in the context of the Direct Market model that DC and Marvel work through. If the majority of specialist comic shops are based on the Direct Market model created by those two companies as an outlet for their product, it's to be expected that their product will feature prominently in those shops. That doesn't necessarily mean that the medium of comics as a whole benefits, nor does it necessarily mean that this is what the audience wants. All it means is that at some point, the Direct Market seemed to be the best available option in terms of the big two running their publishing businesses profitably.

hostchecker

They just arent like the old days. I would go read the comics at my grandmas house from the 60's. NO valuable stuff just old stuff

halite

As a relative novice to comics I think I can give a slightly different perspective on this discussion. I got into comics only a few years ago when a friend of mine lent me a few TPB's, I instantly loved them and the medium and so set about buying stuff. My reading is fairly eclectic, from works like blankets and dropsie avenue, to TPB's of transmetropolitan, preacher, fables etc. Recently I have started buying runs of back issues, including some super heroe stuff, I love batman and have subscriptions to batman, spidey, hulk, captain america and DMZ. The problem I have with trying to get into the super heroe stuff is the very complicated back stories, continuities, different universes etc.

My point is that I think that if you have been reading comics for a long time then the super heroe stuff is easily accesible, however if you are new to comics it is very difficult, for example I recently bought some back issues of JLA, I read the first issue and did not have a clue what was going on! I think because of the overly complicated continuitiues, I will get most pleasure out of reading newer comics or limited runs, because I do not have to think about what has gone before.

Sesudra

I love both things-the "mainstream" has some great books,and then the smaller publishers also have some of my favourites.

One of my major beefs with the mainstream superhero stuff is the total lack of consistency in the stories.Theres change for the sake of the story/the character,then theres crazy change for the reason that writers have changed/quit/been fired.The main example I can think of is the Xmen.the film comes out then *BAM* they're dressed in leather like the film then *BAM* they're a mutant police force then *BAM* mutants are going to take over the world then *BAM* theres only 192 mutants left then *BAM* no more mutants are being born then *BAM* yes there are,and now we're living in San Francisco.and thats just been in the past 5 to 7 years,I feel like I have whiplash

Mr. K

I agree that X-Men has gone a bit off the rails in recent years, I kinda wish they'd tell us what happened to Apocalypse!

Sofox

I'm not sure if this is the best place to post it (maybe a new topic), but I found this guy who wrote a series of really cool articles about the American comic book scene, where it is today, how it came to be, and where he hopes it'll go. It's written really well, gives a lot of good info, has a nice sense of humour and and a good feeling that the guy just did a lot of reading and is now offering his thoughts on it. Here you are:

http://vividstuff.blogspot.com/2008/12/article-comics-banished-medium.html
http://vividstuff.blogspot.com/2008/12/article-2-hpcp-infection.html
http://vividstuff.blogspot.com/2008/12/article-3-score-one-for-idiocy-aka.html
http://vividstuff.blogspot.com/2009/01/article-4-creator-revolution.html

Fysh

Diamond raises order benchmarks and thresholds

The short version is, if your product doesn't reach certain monthly sales targets (defined in terms of financial return, not units shifted) over a period of time, Diamond won't distribute your product.

Likely factors? Further homogenisation of publishers, if not of product. Smaller publishers will struggle to reach the higher thresholds within the Direct Market (unless they raise prices, which will probably alienate readers and thus not really help).

I wonder at this point whether comics publishers (and retailers, for that matter) will question the validity of the Direct Market model. Sure, publishers love the idea of non-returnable stock. I'm pretty sure retailers don't, especially in the current economic climate. The question is, will their dislike of it move them enough to change anything?

BlaasForRafa

Fysh wrote: »

Diamond raises order benchmarks and thresholds

The short version is, if your product doesn't reach certain monthly sales targets (defined in terms of financial return, not units shifted) over a period of time, Diamond won't distribute your product.

Likely factors? Further homogenisation of publishers, if not of product. Smaller publishers will struggle to reach the higher thresholds within the Direct Market (unless they raise prices, which will probably alienate readers and thus not really help).

I wonder at this point whether comics publishers (and retailers, for that matter) will question the validity of the Direct Market model. Sure, publishers love the idea of non-returnable stock. I'm pretty sure retailers don't, especially in the current economic climate. The question is, will their dislike of it move them enough to change anything?

Its probably diamonds reaction to the recession but its still bad news. Some direct market comic shops have switched some of their graphic novel orders over to book publishers already.

Whats needed is an alternative distributor for the comic book (or pamphlet as some people like to call them) from smaller companies to survive in the DM. Unfortunately its unlikely to happen in the current economic climate. Also Diamonds crushing monopoly will probably detract from anyone doing that. Perhaps if independant minded comic shops banded together into some kind of buying bloc with some kind of distribution and marketing plan they could do something but that takes organization, inititiave and money.

Added to this Marvel seems to be on a "lets squeeze the fans till their blood runs dry" campaign of raising prices on their highest selling books (Avengers, Spiderman, Xmen titles and all miniseries) to $3.99. I've cancelled most of my Marvel titles already and will cancel any 22 page comic that goes to that price. I do not intend to be gouged by them.

Fysh

Some healthy competition against Diamond would help; relinquishing the idea of the Direct Market as the sole avenue for publishing comics would also help, and considerably more. In most other areas of periodical publishing, returns are not only allowed but expected. This allows retailers to take more risks on products that they don't know will sell, as compared to the direct market method which requires retailers to ingrain customers with a collector mentality in order to shift those old back issues that are now taking up valuable shelf space.

I'm still inclined to believe that more variety in the size and price of the periodicals would help. 32 pages with 22 pages of comics isn't any kind of a golden rule, it's just a habit. Why not more pages in black and white? Or A5 with 48 pages? Or 64 pages on a bi-monthly schedule? Or even 96 pages quarterly? Or whatever else tickles your fancy - but basically a format more suited to whatever content you want to run, rather than having the content constantly have to fit within the arbitrary format?

Of course, I also think that publishers having the stones to start selling digital comics would help. Cheaper to distribute, easier to get to new audiences, they don't take up space...hell, if they sold digital comics at $1 a go or the equivalent I'd sample a lot more stuff than I do now, and the stuff I really liked I'd buy in hard copy. The dumbest thing of all being that people who want to just read a given comic without buying it in hard copy can already find a scanned copy online with about 15 minutes of google-searching. So it's not like releasing legal digital comics would encourage people to be pirates, because it's already really simple to be a pirate. But it would provide an avenue for people who want to legally buy digital comics, in the same way that iTunes paved the way for a growing legal market of digital music purchasing.

RAMAN

I have to admit I'm not much of a super hero fan but I can appreciate other peole enjoying these type of comics. As a non collector ie I'm happy to buy a trade read it and pass it on to a friend like I would with any book I dont really get the collector mentality but I do think people have a right to their own habits and a choice on how they chose to enjoy their hobbys be it comic's, music or whatever.

Patrick Brown

I agree with Fysh. The direct market is a good place to publish superhero comics, and comics that appeal to the same people who like superhero comics, but it's not a great place to publish comics in other genres. As the diversity of webcomics shows, there's plenty more to comics. Would xkcd or Girls With Slingshots have succeeded in the direct market? I doubt it - but their creators make a living on the web.

I think prople who create comics that don't have much appeal to the Marvel/DC fanbase shouldn't rely on the direct market, but will have to find other avenues. Eddie Campbell's made the switch to the bookshop market - I don't think I saw any of his last three books in comic shops. Ultimately though, with newspaper cartooning dying and the bookshop market very difficult to crack, the web is probably the most promising avenue.

BlaasForRafa

Patrick Brown wrote: »

I agree with Fysh. The direct market is a good place to publish superhero comics, and comics that appeal to the same people who like superhero comics, but it's not a great place to publish comics in other genres. As the diversity of webcomics shows, there's plenty more to comics. Would xkcd or Girls With Slingshots have succeeded in the direct market? I doubt it - but their creators make a living on the web.

10-15 years ago they would have succeeded in the direct market. Now whether its diamond deserting the alternative comics publishers or the publishers deserting diamond...at the end of the day comics fans lose out. How is a comics fan going to get even the chance to try something different if its not even distributed to the places where they get comics.

Its all very well saying the web is the place to go but theres a big difference between getting a physical comic book or gn and reading it on the web. Plus the payment model for reading/downloading comics from the web is not well established at the moment, web users are used to getting things for free (generalisation I know but theres a lot of truth to it).

If there was a competitor/alternative to Diamond then that would be great, its time that monopoly was broken (and it should never have been allowed to be established in the first place.

Patrick Brown

BlaasForRafa wrote: »

10-15 years ago they would have succeeded in the direct market.

I disagree. The problem with the direct market is it's a niche, and a fairly narrow one. If you're doing a comic that doesn't appeal to that rather small segment of humanity that frequents comic shops, getting it into comic shops isn't going to help. Look at Virgin's Dan Dare. Well established character in a popular genre, got lots of publicity in the British press, and it flopped, because it was sold exclusively through comic shops, and the people who like Dan Dare aren't comic shop customers. The comic shop market is not all of comics, and comics fans are not the only potential readers.

BlaasForRafa wrote: »

How is a comics fan going to get even the chance to try something different if its not even distributed to the places where they get comics.

Its all very well saying the web is the place to go but theres a big difference between getting a physical comic book or gn and reading it on the web. Plus the payment model for reading/downloading comics from the web is not well established at the moment, web users are used to getting things for free (generalisation I know but theres a lot of truth to it).

It's true, it's hard to make money publishing on the web. But that's the creator's problem, not the reader's. If you, as a fan, want to try something different that's not distributed to comic shops, you can.

And from the creator's point of view, publishing via Diamond costs an absolute fortune, for very little return, and you're asking retailers and customers to take a one-off chance more or less sight-unseen, based on a cover image and a paragraph in the ghetto section of a catalogue.

On the other hand, publishing on the web costs next to nothing, allows me to build an audience - readers can try it out for free to see if they like it - and I can make a small return by publishing print editions and selling them at cons and via the website. Hopefully that'll grow over time, or I'll figure out other avenues. From my point of view as a creator starting out small-scale, it's a good deal. And from the reader's point of view it's a good deal as well.

Fysh

BlaasForRafa wrote: »

How is a comics fan going to get even the chance to try something different if its not even distributed to the places where they get comics.

I'll be honest, the Direct Market as it operates today (and for most of the time it's existed at all, from what I understand) exists specifically to cater to an audience that is perceived to already know what it wants. And given the number of bookshops and online retailers that sell TPBs and OGNs these days, I can't really feel sorry for anyone who says "Man, I'd love to read some non superhero comics, but I can't find any in my local comic shop".

BlaasForRafa

Fysh wrote: »

I'll be honest, the Direct Market as it operates today (and for most of the time it's existed at all, from what I understand) exists specifically to cater to an audience that is perceived to already know what it wants. And given the number of bookshops and online retailers that sell TPBs and OGNs these days, I can't really feel sorry for anyone who says "Man, I'd love to read some non superhero comics, but I can't find any in my local comic shop".

Thats a sweeping generalisation your making about comics fans that like to go to their local comic shop and peruse what they buy and I'm fed up with it.

As usual you paint people who buy superhero comics pretty much as being retards and yes some are (and I despise them) but I know many who are as literate as any alt comics fan but who want the visceral experience of having the comic/gn in their hands before committing to buy.

BlaasForRafa

Patrick Brown wrote: »

I disagree. The problem with the direct market is it's a niche, and a fairly narrow one. If you're doing a comic that doesn't appeal to that rather small segment of humanity that frequents comic shops, getting it into comic shops isn't going to help. Look at Virgin's Dan Dare. Well established character in a popular genre, got lots of publicity in the British press, and it flopped, because it was sold exclusively through comic shops, and the people who like Dan Dare aren't comic shop customers. The comic shop market is not all of comics, and comics fans are not the only potential readers

Virgin comics folded so there were a lot of issues there that are not related to how its distributed. As I recall sales of Dan Dare were approximately 15-20k

Typically the printing and sales of the "floppy" comic book basically offsets the cost of the writer and artist and the production costs and revenue from trades and GNs is where the profits are generated.

This is the model that successful licencees like Dark Horse use for example with their Conan series which has to date run 59 issues with numerous collected editions. A lot of it comes down to the business plan that the company uses and the quality of their management team.

There have been many successes in the non big two field, Cerebus ran for 300 issues, Nexus had a 10+ year run with 4 different companies, Bone self-published and then went with Image, Mouse Guard has been a success with Archaia press, Thieves and Kings was successful with I Box publishing. Quality will normally find a way of succeeding as long as the product is good and the management/marketing is good.

As with any creative enterprise there will be many more failures than successes and to blame everything on the distribution method would be a mistake(I am not saying that diamond is not without issues, its a monopoly which is wrong in and of itself). IIRC something like 7 films fail for every 1 that makes a profit, many tv series don't make it past the initial pilot. Now it could be argued that the film distribution system is faulty and network tv is the wrong way to judge the creative worth of a tv program but then your talking about tearing down all the delivery systems for creative product.

Perhaps that would be the right thing to do...but how do you go about doing that without making things worse for the creators rather than better?

Patrick Brown

BlaasForRafa wrote: »

Now it could be argued that the film distribution system is faulty and network tv is the wrong way to judge the creative worth of a tv program but then your talking about tearing down all the delivery systems for creative product.

Perhaps that would be the right thing to do...but how do you go about doing that without making things worse for the creators rather than better?

This is completely bizarre. Suggesting that some creators could do better outside the direct market is not an attack on those comics that do fine within the direct market, or on the people who like them, so quit the hyperbole.

livingtargets

The direct market model is a joke.

It`s flawed and should have been gotten rid off a long time ago.It has kept comics a niche and even worse,it`s making "mainstream comics" redundant as
a storytelling tool because publishers aren`t going to take a risk on something that won`t sell as many copies as a comic about Spiderman getting a new suit(and they`re not wrong,I suppose,why take the risk when you can publish a story about a new suit by some big name and easily make Diamond`s "minimum order" figures,because as much as comic fanboys like to bitch,it seems they prefer slapping down their dollah-dollah bills for comics they don`t enjoy).

Fysh

The Direct Market is a terrible idea from the point of view of customers and retailers; it exists to protect the publishers that work within it by making products sold through it non-returnable (unlike other periodical publishing) and thus putting all the financial risk on the retailers who order the product. This then leads retailers to have to encourage the collector mentality in their audience so that they can shift the otherwise-worthless piles of old stock that they'll end up with every time their 3-months-in-advance orders overestimate actual demand.

Regarding your interpretation of superhero fans - I don't have a particularly high opinion of people who only read superhero comics, in the same way that I don't have a particularly high opinion of people who restrict their reading to one genre. This doesn't mean everyone who goes to the comic shop on a weekly basis, or everyone who reads superhero comics. Hell, I go to the comic shop most weeks. I don't see why my personal opinion on this subject winds you up so much, though. It's not like I'm claiming to be any authority on the subject, or stating my opinion as fact.

There again, you appear to be claiming that because you can name 5 titles that have succeeded in the Direct Market, it's clearly a friendly outlet for independent or non-superhero comics. Sales and preorder figures tend to suggest it's not, particularly when something like Ultimatum or Ultimates 3 - titles that were at best mediocre in terms of critical reception - regularly topped any number of titles that generated a significantly better critical response.

Fysh

Just saw something relevant to the discussion in this thread:
Boom! Studios signs a deal for newsstand distribution of some of their comics

I hope it works out well for them, given the current situation publishers should be looking to get their product out there through as many avenues as possible to ensure the widest number of possible customers can get at it.